Improve your conversion rate

If you're getting a good amount of traffic from your ads but not enough people actually buying or signing up for things (we call these actions "conversions"), you can take several steps to improve. You can use the free AdWords conversion tracking tool to measure how many people are actually buying or signing up for things after they land on your website. Then, there are a number of things you can do to improve your conversion rate, like adding more specific keywords and negative keywords, which we'll cover in this article.

Track your success with conversion tracking

Before you start making any big changes to your account, it's a good idea to see how much business your ads are currently generating. AdWords shows you the number of impressions and clicks you get with your ads, but wouldn't it be great if AdWords could also show you the number of conversions you're getting? Well, AdWords can do that – with conversion tracking.

After setting up conversion tracking, you'll be able to see how effective your campaigns are once you make adjustments to them. For example, If you make a change to a campaign and notice your conversion rate increasing, that's a good sign that your change is leading to better campaign performance.

Use specific keywords for better conversion rates

Once you're able to track your conversions, you can then focus on improving your conversion rate. Specific keywords often tend to have a better conversion rate than general keywords. For example, consider the keywords below. Which one do you think leads to a higher conversion rate?

Acme

Acme printers

Acme 710c

Generally, more specific keywords like "Acme 710c" tend to lead to a better conversion rate than general keywords like "Acme." That's because people searching for specific models or product numbers have typically already researched their product and want to make a purchase.

Keep in mind, however, that using more specific keywords can lead to fewer impressions. If your keywords are too specific, fewer people may end up searching for those terms. The trick is to find the right balance between being general enough to match what people are searching for, and specific enough to lead to conversions.

Use negative keywords to refine your traffic

Another way to try to improve your conversion rate is to use negative keywords. When you use negative keywords, your ad won't show up when people search for those particular keywords. This is helpful when you're trying to limit your ad so that it doesn't show up for people who are just browsing around and aren't ready to purchase anything yet.

For example, some advertisers use "free" as a negative keyword. Unless your site offers free products or trials, you might want to add this as a negative keyword to attract fewer people who are just looking for free products. People searching for free products are probably less likely to make purchases.

Use the search terms report to reach the right customers

AdWords shows you how well your individual keywords are doing, but it can also show you the exact words that your customers searched for when your ad showed up. You can view this list of terms in the search terms report.

After reviewing this report, you can then decide to add or exclude certain keywords from your keyword list. Doing this can help you target the right customers by either expanding or refining who can see your ad.

Example

Let's say you sell video games on your website. After looking at the search terms report, you see that your ad showed up when people searched for "video game magazine." People searching for magazines probably aren't looking to buy video games right now. In this case, you might want to consider adding "magazine" as a negative keyword so that your ad won't show for these searches.

Meanwhile, you also see that your ad showed up for people searching for "video game figurines." And it just so happens that you sell video game figurines too! In this case, you might want to consider adding "video game figurines" as a specific keyword so that your ad has a better chance of showing up for this search.

Include prices in your ad to attract potential buyers

Another way to get more relevant traffic is to include prices in your ad text. If a customer sees the price of your product and still clicks your ad, you know he's interested in potentially buying that product at that price. If he doesn't like the price, he won't click your ad, and you'll save yourself the cost of that click.

As an experiment, you might want to consider adding prices in your ad text to see if that helps your ads lead to a better conversion rate. This can be especially effective when your prices are lower than your competitors'!

To test whether this will work for you, you can run an experiment by creating a new ad and rotating your ads. When using ad rotation, you can compare the clickthrough rates and conversion rates of the ad that includes the price versus the one that doesn't.